Quite good, this. You know the drill: seminal horror, boundary-pushing violence, faintly ludicrous psychology, dead creepy thanks to Anthony Perkins’ layered performance as woman-slayer Norman Bates.
DVD Extras:
Pity about the DVD, then. A two-disc Special Edition, it’s a welcome improvement on the vanilla effort available on Region 2, but doesn’t include the 90-minute Making Of from the Region 1 Collector’s version. There are two diverting extras: a fuzzy but informative chat with Hitch called Masters Of Cinema and a featurette of the American Film Institute’s Hitch tribute evening, at which the implacable auteur looks shockingly like a slain pig before giving a witty acceptance speech. It’s a shame, though, that there’s no commentary from the likes of, say, Hitchcock’s Secret Notebooks writer Dan Auiler. Forty-five years since Psycho scared audiences and nine since the birth of DVD, the master of suspense is still waiting for a masterful DVD treatment.
